Because of his final crime he gained some … notoriety, and as a result is in the news every now and then.

This article, originally in The New York Times, is appearing around the globe with this particular link coming out of Australia. I am putting it here for two reasons, it helps me validate with myself that I was in real danger which I would not allow myself to believe for a very long time, and, I place every article that appears about him here to possibly attract lost souls.

Before I knew about this place, I would do internet searches on Albert Fentress to make sure he was still under supervision (He is allowed to petition for release every two years). As I met others that had problems with this man, I learned that we all had been keeping an eye on him with the internet, and one day when I did a search the second link down brought me directly here to one of my own posts. So now whenever he appears in the news I copy it here in hopes that others who are still struggling with the ghost of Mr. Fentress will find there way here and learn they are not alone.

If you found your way here this way, don’t bother to read what’s below. Instead look around this site and see that there is hope.

Portraying the mind of a murderer takes more than the E-word, writes Benedict Carey.

Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into home-made chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason.

A few forensic scientists have begun to think of these people as not merely disturbed but "evil". Evil in that their deliberate, habitual savagery defies any psychological explanation or attempt at treatment.

Most psychiatrists avoid the word evil, saying its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgement that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals.

But many forensic examiners say their work forces them to reflect on the concept of evil, and some acknowledge they can find no other term for certain individuals they have evaluated.

In an effort to standardise what makes a crime particularly heinous, researchers at New York University have been developing a "depravity scale", which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details.

A prominent personality expert at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behaviour, derived from detailed biographies of more than 500 violent criminals. He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the "E-word" cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis.

"We are talking about people who commit breathtaking acts, who do so repeatedly, who know what they're doing, and are doing it in peacetime" under no threat to themselves, says Dr Michael Stone, a Columbia University psychiatrist who has examined several hundred killers in US psychiatric centres. "We know from experience who these people are and how they behave," and it is time to give their behaviour "the proper appellation".

"Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us," says Dr Robert Simon, a clinical professor of psychiatry and the author of Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream.

Simon considers the notion of evil to be of no use to forensic psychiatry, in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values.

The terrorists on September 11 thought they were serving God, he argues; those who kill people at abortion clinics also claim to be doing so. If the issue is history's most transcendent savages, on the other hand, most people agree that Hitler and Pol Pot qualify.

"When you start talking about evil, psychiatrists don't know anything more about it than anyone else," Simon says. "Our opinions might carry more weight, under the patina or authority of the profession, but the point is, you can call someone evil and so can I. So what? What does it add?"

Stone argues that a benefit of including a consideration of evil may be a more clear-eyed appreciation of who should be removed from society. He is not an advocate of the death penalty. And his interest in evil began long before President Bush began using the word to describe terrorists or hostile regimes.

Stone's hierarchy of evil is anchored by the names of many infamous criminals who were executed or locked up for good: Ted Bundy, the former law school student convicted of killing two young women in Florida and linked to dozens of other killings in the 1970s; John Wayne Gacy of Illinois, the convicted killer who strangled more than 30 boys and buried them under his house; and Ian Brady who, with his girlfriend, Myra Hindley, tortured and killed children in England in the 1960s.

But another killer on the hierarchy is Albert Fentress, a former New York schoolteacher examined by Stone, who killed and cannibalised a teenager, in 1979. Fentress petitioned to be released from a state mental hospital, and in 1999 a jury agreed he was ready. He later withdrew the petition, when prosecutors announced that a new witness (Good ol' Roland) would testify against him. At a hearing in 2001, Stone argued against Fentress's release, and the idea that the killer might be considered ready to make his way back into society still makes the psychiatrist's eyes widen.

Dr Saul Faerstein, a Beverly Hills forensic psychiatrist, says: "I agree some people cannot be rehabilitated, but the risk in using the word evil is that it may mean one thing to one psychiatrist and something else to another ... I don't know that we want psychiatrists making life-and-death judgements in some cases, based on a concept that is not medical."

Even if it is used judiciously, other experts say, the concept of evil is powerful enough that it could obscure the mental troubles and intellectual quirks that motivate brutal killers, and sometimes allow them to avoid detection. Bundy, the serial killer, was reportedly very romantic, attentive and affectionate with his own girlfriends.

Gacy, a gracious and successful businessman, reportedly created a clown figure to lift the spirits of ailing children. "He was a very normal, very functional guy in many respects," says Dr Richard Rappaport, a psychiatrist who examined Gacy before his trial.

"I think the main reason it's better to avoid the term evil, at least in the courtroom, is that it evokes a personalised Satan," says Dr Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who examined convicted serial murderer Jeffrey Dahmer.

"There aren't many in whom I couldn't find some redeeming attributes and some humanity. As far as we can tell, the causes of their behaviour are biological, psychological and social, and do not, so far, demonstrably include the work of Lucifer," he says.

Curtisthe notion of 'evil' is something that I believe in, and it's not limited to the small number of people such as Fentress.I think that evil can also be displayed by people who although they display love and respect to others actually have no conception of 'real' love and respect and therefore end up destroying those they say they love and respect.

M. Scott Peck desribes it better than me in his book "People of the Lie".Here's an interesting little bit.

Quote:

We come now to a sort of paradox. I have said that evil people feel themselves to be perfect. At the same time, however, I think they have an unacknowledged sense of their own evil nature. Indeed, it is this very sense from which they are frantically trying to flee. The essential component of evil is not the absence of a sense of sin or imperfection, but the unwillingness to tolerate that sense. At one and the same time, the evil are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness. Rather than blissfully lacking a sense of morality, like the psychopath, they are continually engaged in sweeping the evidence of their evil under the rug of their own consciousness. For everything they did, Bobby’s parents ( reference to a case history in the book ) had a rationalization — a whitewash good enough for themselves even if not for me. The problem is not a defect of conscience but the effort to deny the conscience its due. We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves. The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as a part of this cover-up process. Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it.It often happens, then, that the evil may be recognized by its very disguise. The lie can be perceived before the misdeed it is designed to hide — the cover-up before the fact. We see the smile that hides the hatred, the smooth and oily manner that masks the fury, the velvet glove that covers the fist. Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of the evil. The disguise is usually impenetrable. But what we can catch are glimpses of “The uncanny game of hide-and-seek in the obscurity of the soul, in which it, the single human soul, evades itself, avoids itself, hides from itself.

Dave

_________________________
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.Henry David Thoreau

Roland, give yourself a big pat on the back for stopping this evil man. If he had been given freedom, then he would have went back to his evil ways. You have saved innocent lives from abuse and maybe loss of life.It must be so nice to think, that you are the biggest nail in his coffin.I'll have a long drink to that, cheers,

ste

_________________________
Whoever stole the Sun, put it back and we'll drop all the charges!

compared to my abuse, also by a teacher in a adjacent county, its seems like a.......uh i don't know, but it seems minimal in comparison.

i'm suprised this hasn't recieved the same national attention that Bundy and Gracy got--I've heard of them. they were there before I was born.

How could anyone think of EVER releasing this (yes) monster!!!

I'm sorry you ever met up with this thing, Roland

I used to check up on my perp but its bin awhile since i have tried to do so. I tried to recently But couldn't find any info-its as if he never existed!! (I thought that they had to remain in the state?)

anyway, i don't have much else to say (lie). I can't promise that if I ever catch up with him that i won't find a way to su......I think i should stop there.

Logan

_________________________
"Terrible thing to live in Fear"-Shawshank Redemption WOR Alumnus Hope Springs 2009"Quite a thing to live in fear, this is what is means to be a slave"-Blade Runner

I
agree that my access and use of the MaleSurvivor discussion forums and
chat room is subject to the terms of this Agreement. AND the sole
discretion of MaleSurvivor. I agree that my use of MaleSurvivor
resources are AT-WILL,
and that my posting privileges may be terminated at any time, and for
any reason by MaleSurvivor.